The Long Fall of Night: The Long Fall of Night Book 1 (16 page)

“These are Americans, guys,” Matt said, surprising Roger since he rarely argued when Chris and Donnie got going on anything. Mostly, he would sit back, amused, while they insulted each other. Not this time apparently. “They can’t even have a cup of coffee now, unless they’re like those freaky prepared guys with the survival bunkers for basements. Five days ago, they were watching the hockey playoffs in the very arena we’re now taking them to live for however long. Cut them some slack, okay?”

Chris and Donnie exchanged a look but didn’t put up too much argument. “If it were me, and I opened my front door to a squad of guys with guns, I don’t think I’d put up a fight, is what I’m saying,” Chris continued. “I mean, disaster relief is supposed to be relief, you know?”

“Bullshit,” Donnie countered. “If we were in this shit, you know you’d be knocking on my door, begging to come in and play fortress with me because you know I got enough guns and bullets to last us until Armageddon, and there ain’t nothing in your fridge but beer, mustard, and Girl Scout cookies.”

“Play fortress? What are you, eight?” Chris pointed a chicken leg at him. “Don’t knock the Thin Mints. I bet you cash money, there are people who would kill for some of those right about now.”

“Yeah,” Ness said, leveling them all with a look. “There probably are.”

They caught her meaning and lowered their heads as the smiles melted off their faces. Beside Roger, Chris grunted in pain as Donnie jerked, which meant the bigger man had delivered justice in the form of a swift kick to the shins for Chris’s insensitivity.

The men from Team Delta came into the mess tent, looking much like Roger felt: tired, hungry, and more than a little shell-shocked at what they’d seen out there. When they sat at the same table as Shockwave, Roger paid attention when Donnie hollered to them.

“How’d it go for you, fellas?”

One of the guys, PFC Grant Cunningham, answered. “Not bad, not bad. Only a couple frustrated people not willing to cooperate. Had a few try to run, but we caught ’em. Denver’s lucky, though, since the power ain’t out everywhere. I got a brother working in Chicago, and it’s chaos. Fucking chaos, after only three days.”

Roger raised a brow. “How do you know?”

“Sat phone,” Cunningham answered through a bite of chicken. “We both check in with our parents every couple days. They say the media isn’t reporting much more than it’s a terrorist attack, the investigation is ongoing, UN support, blah blah. But Louis, my brother, says when some of the rich people in Chicago talked to someone outside the blackout zone—some of them got sat phones, too—they panicked and flew out on choppers before the military could move in and stop ’em. So people there who couldn’t afford to leave knew what was happening before the rest of the country, and by the time Louis’s battalion showed, there were people setting up fortresses and shit. He says they’ve been getting shot at, people are burning down whole neighborhoods to keep from bein’ overrun. High-rises are prime real estate, and they’re all rigged with booby traps. Louis thought they’d be bringing in tanks in the next couple days.”

All of Shockwave listened in stunned silence, and one of the other members of Delta, Corporal Joel Smith, heard the conversation and joined in.

“My sister in Florida got out the first night. She and her husband—plastic surgeon I always thought had more money than common sense—have a yacht. They decided to wait out the outage on the boat, thinking it was just a few days, and she could work on her tan. She called a friend in the Bahamas to see if they could come chill for a bit, and the friend told her what happened. She says people are fleeing Florida for Cuba, instead of the Cubans coming here. It’s like reverse immigration.” Corporal Smith shook his head. “This is some fucked up shit, if you know what I mean.”

Chris groused that yes, they did know. Roger had a feeling before it was all over, they’d know more than they wanted to. Suddenly, he needed to get out of the stifling tent and maybe find a way to focus his restlessness, or he’d never get any shut-eye.

After dinner, the group grabbed a quick shower and hit their racks in preparation for more sweeps the next day. Roger waited in the shadows of the barracks showers for Ness to emerge some time later, and when she did, he hooked her around the waist and pulled her into the dark with him, pushing his lips against hers insistently. Despite her strength, she let him take the lead, opening up to his tongue and not complaining when he squeezed her tight enough to force a gasp from her lungs.

“You okay?” he murmured when they broke apart, touching their foreheads together, her wet hair leaving drips on his shirt.

“Yeah, why?” she asked with an arched brow.

“Because you seem tense, that’s all.”

She shook her head, her expression neutral, giving nothing away. He studied her in the dimness of the base lights that didn’t reach their hiding spot, trying to see something more than calm unflappability in her. There was nothing.

“I’m fine,” she said with a small smile. “Why? You looking for a damsel in distress to save?”

He knew better than to fall for that bait. “Who says I’m not looking for a damsel to save me?”

“If you need saving, Brown, perhaps I need to rethink my second-in-command.” Her eyes flashed with amusement while he huffed indignantly.

“I’ll settle for someone to rub me in all the right places,” he leered. “That’s about the only saving I need right now.”

“You need to be saved from your own right hand?” She
tsk
ed. “Sad.”

He held up his left hand, wiggling the fingers and grinning. “Southpaw,” he reminded her. Deliberately lowering that hand to her ass, he squeezed and mouthed at her jawline and down her neck. “I’ve got a few ideas on where we can take this for some privacy,” he murmured against her skin.

“So do I,” she whispered, her hands sliding into his hair and gripping with more force than necessary. He loved it when she got rough with him.

“Show me,” he dared her, then stayed half a step behind her when she led him across one of the open runways to the door of the air traffic control tower, the silhouette of the strange, multi-peaked roof of DIA mimicking the mountains. Their relationship was uncomplicated. She was his NCOIC (Non-commissioned Officer in Charge), and on missions and in front of other soldiers, their team was part of a well-oiled machine. In stolen moments, they were friends with benefits, and Vanessa Middler gave some mighty fine benefits when she found a way to let loose. Given the tower was more private than most of the locations they’d managed to secure when in the field, he was hoping, as they scaled the heights of the building, she’d definitely let loose tonight.

When they reached the top, she paused and looked out over the dark landscape. The moon was waning, just past full, providing enough light for them to see where the airport land ended and the highways circled. Beyond that, there were homes embedded in stands of trees, gradually giving way to mountains which rose, hulking shadows in the distance.

“Strange, isn’t it?” she asked, her voice detached. “How one little thing, something we take for granted every day, could mean so much to our way of life. Electricity. Just another bill we pay. How many days have you spent thinking about it?”

He shrugged and came up behind her, wrapping her in his arms. Trailing his fingers into her waistband, he bunched up the material of her shirt and lifted it free of her pants, flattening his palm on her warm abdomen.

“Hardly at all until four days ago.”

“And now people are going nuts because of it, and we’re responsible for keeping the crazy from spreading, like a disease. It’s one thing to know we’re secure with our battalion, that our equipment is protected and we have access to resources the rest of the country doesn’t, but how fair is that?”

“There’s a reason for that,” he murmured, brushing her hair off her neck and nibbling below her ear. She tilted her head, giving him as much of her skin as he wanted. Almost absentmindedly, she shifted back and forth, like they were dancing, her bubble-butt rubbing enticingly against his crotch. He knew she could feel his hard-on. He made no secret of it. It made it difficult to think, to keep his part of the conversation going. “If we didn’t have the resources we do, we wouldn’t be in a position to help anybody, arrange supply distribution, get people to safety. Resource priorities, Ness,” he reminded her. “How effective would our protection of the citizens of Denver be if we were deprived of food and water, too?”

She shook her head, and he was grateful she didn’t argue with him. They both knew in wartime situations, if the supply chain was disrupted, conditions for the soldiers on the front lines could deteriorate rapidly. Thankfully, that was not the case in the current situation. Yet. If it became so, they could survive off the land better here than somewhere like the Northeast.

Before he could get maudlin, she turned in his arms and encircled his neck, crossing her wrists behind his head. “Fuck me,” she whispered throatily, then kissed him with a ferocity that surprised him. The question of whether or not she was okay arose again in his head, but his mouth was too busy being invaded by her tongue to form the words. And Ness didn’t take kindly to coddling, anyway.

She pushed him to his back on the surface of a nearby desk. It wasn’t terribly cluttered, so when she pulled down her pants, then his, and rolled a condom on him from the army-issued stash Chris and Donnie had joked she wouldn’t need so she should give her share to them, Roger was able to lie back and enjoy her climbing on without anything digging into his back.

S
ometimes when you
’re overwhelmed by a situation—when you’re in the darkest of darkness—that’s when your priorities are reordered.

—Phoebe Snow

W
HAT THE HELL WAS THAT
?
Ash sat up with a jolt, listening to the silence, hoping the thump that had woken him would sound again so he could pinpoint it. His ears rang with the quiet, and he held his breath. Nothing. But
something
had woken him.

Maybe it was Charlotte or Russ going back to bed from the bathroom. He was about to lie down again when there came a sound like something smacking flesh. He narrowed his eyes in the darkness, reaching to the nearest pack and grabbing the heavy metal flashlight from one of its outer loops.

Don’t go storming in on Charlotte and Russ if they’re getting busy,
he reminded himself. When Ash had nearly drawn his gun on Russ after his return from getting clothes, he’d realized his paranoia needed reining in. Still, flashlight in one hand, his other creeping to the gun beneath his pillow, he wanted to be ready if he wasn’t being—

His sister screamed.

He bolted down the hall, crashing into the wall, picture frames splintering on the floor in his wake like his personal demolition soundtrack. Bursting through her door, he trained the light and his gun at the bed, where Charlotte fought a strange man like an unleashed hellcat. Russ lay beside them, unmoving.

“Hey, fucker,” he snarled. The intruder had managed to tear Charlotte’s t-shirt at the neck, and it hung from her bare shoulder, tatters lying against one exposed breast. The man’s intentions were obvious. Ash didn’t stop to ask questions.

He pulled the trigger, the boom of the gun reverberating through the tiny house. If everyone nearby wasn’t awake now, they weren’t going to be, and that looked to include Russ.

The would-be rapist’s head snapped back, brain matter and blood splattering the wall and lamp and Charlotte’s face. She didn’t stop fighting, however, kicking and flailing and screeching like a banshee until the heavy body hit the floor with a dull thud. Ash went to her, grabbing at her shoulders to ground her. She fought him, too, and he had to yell in her face to break through the hysteria.

“Charlotte!”

She gaped at him, too much of the whites of her eyes showing in the glow of the flashlight, her features etched in sinister shadows. When recognition set in, her face screwed up, and she leaned over the side of the bed and threw up on the body.

“Ash!” Elliot called, and the rest of the house’s sounds reached him. Riley sobbed in the living room, his cries for his mother muffled as though someone held him tight, shielding him from whatever was happening.

“She’s okay, Riley!” he called back. “A little freaked out, but she’s not hurt, okay, buddy?”

“Uncle Ash?” A fresh wail came from the living room.

“I’m okay, too. Just stay in there for a bit, all right? I don’t want you to see.”

“Okay,” Riley answered, clearly calming down, his voice meek.

“Guys, get ready to go,” he hollered. “Shoes on, and get whatever you want to take in the van with you. Elliot, I put your iPod on the end table. Brian, get that last bundle of water bottles from the kitchen but stay put. We all leave the house together.”

“Gotcha,” Brian answered, sounding calmer than the others.
Hold them together for me, Brian,
Ash mentally requested, turning his attention to Charlotte, who was shivering and not bothering to cover herself.

“Char, clothes. You need to change.” He pulled her shirt over her head and used it to mop her face of blood, gray matter, and vomit. She seemed to slowly come to, standing to follow his instructions despite moving robotically. He helped her get dressed, trying to hand her a pair of socks. She stood by the dresser, staring at the wall until he grabbed her again. “You need to go wash your face, hon,” he said gently. “But put your slippers on. There’s glass in the hall.” He led her to the door. “I’ll check Russ and get him up and going if I can, okay?” She wouldn’t let him go when he tried to guide her into the hall, clinging to his t-shirt like a barnacle. “Shh, shh,” he soothed when she whimpered at him, prying her hands off. “Brian? Can you come get Char and help her clean up? I need to look after Russ. Watch the glass.”

The crunch of feet on the floor was steady, and Brian had aimed another flashlight from the living room toward the mouth of the hall, so there was light for Elliot and Riley as well as enough for him to see.

“Come on, sweetheart.” Charlotte went willingly enough, though she hesitated when she saw Brian’s face in the unnerving light. “It’s Brian,” he reminded her. “Remember?” She grunted an affirmative and let herself be steered, so Ash turned back to her boyfriend.

Who groaned.

“Russ.” Ash hurried to his side of the bed, nearly tripping over Riley’s bat on the floor. He kicked it aside. “Dude, can you walk?”

Russ’s eyes rolled around in their sockets, but when he opened them, he seemed aware enough, if in pain.

“What happened?” When he sat up, he winced, but at least he didn’t puke. Surprising, considering the ripe smell from the dead man’s muscles letting go in his final seconds.

“Intruder.” Ash passed Russ the clothes he’d left on a chair beside the window. “Can you dress yourself? We have to leave.
Now.
”

Ash’s urgency must have finally reached through Russ’s pain haze, because his eyes snapped to Ash’s face, and he swallowed.

“Yeah. Gimme a minute, but yeah. Everyone okay?”

Ash moved around the bed to crouch beside the body. The first thing that stood out was the standard issue prison jumpsuit the man had tried to cover with a jacket he’d gotten from one of the guards. He’d been a hulk of a man, with a nose broken more than once, and a set of teeth rotten enough Ash marveled he still had any.

“Everyone but this guy. Charlotte’s a bit freaked. Do you know how he got in?”

“No,” Russ grunted, moving slowly but steadily to pull track pants over his boxers. “Last I knew, we were talking about what an asshole you are and then went to sleep. Guess you’re okay after all.”

“Nah. I am an asshole,” he agreed, not taking his usual offense to Russ’s opinion. “Especially if it means protecting my family. Make sure you have something on your feet when you come out. Glass on the floor.”

He slipped from the room and sidestepped the majority of the hallway mess to poke his head into the bathroom, where Brian had Charlotte bent over the side of the tub to rinse shampoo suds from her hair. It was dark in there, so he left them the light and darted carefully across the hall to Riley’s room to make sure Mr. Inmate hadn’t had friends. The window was open, the curtains blowing in a gentle breeze. The crunch of glass under his stocking feet gave Ash pause, and he stopped before he cut himself. The pieces were big, like the man had cracked the window in two gently and removed the broken halves after ripping the screen off, then let them fall to the carpet before hoisting himself in.

He supposed the thump that had awakened him had been the door to Charlotte’s room closing behind the guy, and the smack was when Russ had been rendered unconscious. Thank god his sister had a set of lungs on her.

Ash stutter-stepped back to the living room for his shoes, having in his restlessness slept in his jeans. Elliot and Riley were huddled on the couch, and both of them looked at him with wide, fearful eyes, Riley’s wet with tears. Ash crouched in front of him.

“That camping trip? We’re leaving now, okay, kid?”

Riley nodded without taking his head off Elliot’s chest.

“She okay?” Elliot asked with a tremor in his voice.

“Yeah. Just a scare. We’re all okay, but Russ is gonna have a whopper of a headache.” He looked at Riley. “So let’s take it a little easy on both of them in the car, okay? Maybe try to get some shut-eye for a few more hours?” Again, the boy nodded. “Got your shoes on? Dressed and ready to go?”

“I am,” Elliot answered. “Riley wants to take his pajamas with him. His clothes are packed anyway, right?”

“Yeah, that works,” Ash said, ruffling the boy’s hair.

Brian emerged with Charlotte, and Ash guided them to the couch, where Riley crawled into his mother’s lap and she held him, rocking and kissing his temple and clinging like she’d never let him go again. Brian kept an arm around her, moving with them.

Russ crunched through the glass in the hall with a steadying hand on the wall, so Ash went to him and grabbed his arm to sling over his shoulder.

“I can walk,” Russ grumbled.

“You can walk faster with help,” Ash said. He supported Russ’s weight to the van, where he parked him in the middle row, not wanting to make the man climb over the seats in his condition. “I’ll be back with the rest of them, and we can go, okay? Here. Take this.” He shoved the gun into Russ’s hand, ignoring the man’s protests. “There’s another one in the house, and two rifles in the closet. I’m good, and I don’t want you out here alone without protection.”

Russ shut up, and Ash hurried back in. The others had gathered in the kitchen. Charlotte was shaking, but she no longer looked dazed, and Riley glommed onto her side, his arms tight around her waist. Ash went to her and framed her face with his palms.

“I’m sorry,” he said. She tried to shake her head, but he held her still. “I should have tied you up and put you in the damn van yesterday. But let’s go now, okay?” This time, he let her move, and she shuffled to the door in acquiescence. “Her and Riles together in the back, okay, Brian?”

“You got it,” Brian said. “Gas?” He was already moving after them.

“Van’s full. Audi’s almost empty from the drive up. We have enough for now.”

Ash returned to the living room for the remaining weapons. Elliot followed him.

“What are you doing? Get in the van.”

“I’m not leaving you alone,” Elliot said fiercely.

“I’m fine,” Ash assured him, rooting in the closet for the two rifles, having already stuffed the second handgun in his pants.

“What happened in there? For real?”

Ash stopped for a moment, and in the dim from Elliot’s flashlight, met his lab partner’s gaze. “Inmate. Knocked Russ out and attacked Charlotte.”

“And?” Elliot pressed.

“He paid for it,” Ash grunted, wanting to get a move on. Elliot didn’t get out of his way, though, pouncing on him with a fierce embrace.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, why?” With his hands full, he couldn’t return the hug or peel the guy off him.

“Because you just killed someone?”

“I’ll save the hysterics for later. Thanks for being concerned, but we gotta go. Now.”

Elliot pulled back and studied him for a second, gulped, and took one of the rifles. “You’re driving.”

Ash grinned to cover a chill that ripped up his spine at the sight of his innocent friend holding a gun. “No shit.” The joke fell flat.

They loaded up with Brian in the other middle seat beside Russ, mother and son in back, cuddling, and Elliot in the front with Ash. The rifles on the floor between the two middle seats were an unpleasant reminder they weren’t leaving for a vacation, despite the packs stacked in the van’s cargo area.

As they backed out of the driveway, Ash said a mental goodbye to the house he’d grown up in. Within those walls, he’d learned the meaning of family and had done everything in his power to protect them. Everything. Including leaving the place behind.

I
t was
clear to Elliot fairly quickly the interstates were not a good idea. Driving out of Auburn on the state roads, they could see portions of the them. Lots of stranded motorists.

“What do you think is wrong with them?” he asked, gesturing to the fourth set of blinking hazard lights.

Ash shrugged. “Disabled somehow. Out of gas or flat tires. Who knows? Hopefully there won’t be as much of that on the smaller highways.”

“Where are we going?”

“Right now, I just want to get out of town. Head west. We’ll stop at sunrise and pull out the GPS. I programmed in Uncle Marvin’s directions.”

Elliot was quiet for a bit, glancing at the clock on the dash. It was just before 4:00 a.m., and a quick peek at their passengers showed it hadn’t taken long for them to go back to sleep. All but Charlotte, anyway, who had Riley tucked under her arm and her cheek resting on top of his head. She blinked at Elliot calmly, and they shared a look, people who understood how close a call it had been a mere hour before. He held up a water bottle to her in question, but she waved it off. At least she was responsive.

“Aren’t we supposed to keep someone with a head injury awake?” he asked, facing front again. “How bad was Russ?”

“He came to pretty quickly and seemed with it enough to get out of the house. If he was that bad, I’d have had to carry him out. We’ll watch him, but I think he’s all right.”

Elliot settled deeper into his seat, chewing on his lip. “I think when we get a chance, I need to call my dad. He won’t be happy I didn’t get in touch with his army contact.”

Ash drummed his fingers on the wheel. “It’s not like it’s smart for you to have been a sitting duck at Charlotte’s house after last night.”